It appears the ACT is maturing politically.
Incidentally, who cares about ACT politics? Surely, all those who care whether their rates will double next year, a block of flats going up next year, joining car rego queues each year, whether enough industry will come to town to give our kids jobs.
Perhaps more people are realising that you cannot whinge and be apathetic at the same time and that you should not leave your interest in state-level politics to a knee-jerk vote once every three years.
It seems Canberrans are turning to the mainstream, according to the latest Canberra Times-Datacol poll. Better to be misrepresented by professionals who will respond professionally, it would seem.
Datacol has been running since the first ACT election 1989. Each time it has picked a fundamental and telling trend that has run against conventional wisdom.
In 1989 it was that it was a Labor v Liberal contest and that Labor as the natural party of government would win. Datacol picked the shatteringly low vote for the major parties. In 1992 it picked – against the wisdom – that the shattered vote would continue. In 1995 it picked – against the wisdom — that the Liberals under Kate Carnell were ahead of Labor in this rusted-on Labor town. In 1998 it pickled – against the wisdom — that the Libs could repeat the 1996 effort. And this election it has predicted the end of independent police-footballer independents Paul Osborne and Dave Rugendyke and an electable surge to the Democrats. Three weeks ago, conventional wisdom had it as a given that Osborne and Rugendyke would win.
It Datacol is right — and four out of four ain’t bad – it will be the first time that the Legislative Assembly contains only federally represented parties. There will be no fluoride haters, anti-self-government opportunists, squabbling residents’ rights idealists or right-wing independents. Also, the Labor Party will no longer be dominated by tomato-red ideologues. It will mark a coming to maturity of the ACT. The Legislative Assembly will roughly mirror a federal Senate vote.
Datacol has picked up a fundamental shift back to the “”left” – or perhaps the “”left” parties have moved to the centre where the voters are.
Interest will still focus on the cross-bench, as it does in Senate elections. But in the ACT the cross-bench decides who governs as well as the fate of legislation.
The poll suggests that Labor is almost certain to get seven seats to the Liberals six, so must be favoured to govern in minority. It will still need the support of two minor party or independent MLAs to govern. With Labor on seven and the Liberals on six, four seats will go to minor parties or independents. I bet Labor leader Jon Stanhope is wishing that those four seats are split evenly – two to the Greens and two to the Democrats. That would mean that he would be beholden to neither. He would need only the support of one or the other to get his legislation through. And if the legislation was of the sort that would be rejected by both, it would probably gain Liberal support.
That would be the best result for the ACT. To have Labor beholden to the Greens alone might spell the disaster that faced the Labor Government in Tasmania in the 1980s – paralysis. Labor often lacks the flexibility to deal with other parties because internal factional deals often bind its total position on an interlocking range of policies. The Greens are a great generator of ideas and a great prickler of consciences, but they tend to keep raising the bar when dealing with major parties — until we are all eating mung beans around a solar camp fire or the people they are dealing with say No.
Labor in majority can be just as bad – beholden to union power and chronic over-spenders. And the Libs in majority invariably become social troglodytes and hand the economy over to greed-is-good merchants.
We have to keep pursing a good economic base in the ACT. We have no natural resources. We are the Singapore of Australia. We only have the brains, education and the energy of our people and (like Singapore) a wonderful location – placed ideally to reap the benefits of federal government contracting out.
Many people have begrudged the Democrats their likely success today – they will get their first seats in the ACT, a place which should be their natural stamping ground. That success has largely come through the use of their federal leader – Senator Natasha Stott Despoja, who is not sitting in the ACT. Well, welcome to politics. You use what you have got. The critical point, though, is for the people of the ACT not to go back to sleep after the election and to watch the Democrats careful. They are at once the most watchable and democratic – anyone can join and vote on policy and leadership – and they are the most vulnerable to influence by small groups for the same reason.